‘Jaws' turns 50 – Here's where you can watch the classic shark thriller in Ontario this summer
'Jaws' is 50 years old this year.
Steven Spielberg's classic thriller was released on June 20, 1975, just in time for the July 4 celebrations in the United States — the holiday during which the film is set.
The film was an adaptation of Peter Benchley's novel of the same name.
Luckily for Ontarians, they won't need to travel to the fictional New England beach community to get up close and personal with the great white shark that terrorized Amity Island's inhabitants.
There are a few opportunities to see what is widely considered the first summer blockbuster on the big screen in Ontario this summer.
Below are a few places around Ontario where you can catch the film on the big screen, whether at a cinema or community screening.
The Little Prince Micro-Cinema in Stratford is screening the film on the actual 50th anniversary of the film's release date.
The showing is on Friday, June 20 at 6 p.m.
There will also be a special 30-minute screening of a making-of documentary following the film.
General admission tickets cost $15.
The Little Prince Micro-Cinema is located at
62 Wellington St. in Stratford.
More information is available at
thelittleprincecinema.com.
The Timmins Museum is celebrating its own 50th anniversary with a community screening of 'Jaws.'
Admission is free but tickets are required, which you can reserve online.
The screening happens Thursday, June 26 at 6:30 p.m.
People are encouraged to have fun by dressing up as their favourite character, wearing their favourite beach gear, bring a floatie or a beach chair and enjoy the film in style. Snacks and refreshments will be sold at the event.
The Timmins Museum National Exhibition Centre is located at
325 2nd Ave. in Timmins.
More information is available at
timminsmuseum.ca.
Oshawa's Regent Theatre has long-standing classic movie nights, and on July 3 the cinema will play 'Jaws.'
The showing starts at 7 p.m.
Tickets cost $7.50 in advance online or $5 at the door (cash only), with door sales beginning one hour before start time. Children and students get in free.
Regent Theatre is located at
50 King St. E. in Oshawa.
More information is available at
regenttheatre.ca.
You don't have to go to the movies to watch the movie.
NBC will air 'Jaws' on Friday, June 20 at 8 p.m. The network's streaming service, Peacock, also has 'Jaws' and its three sequels available to stream until July 14.
Several other streaming platforms also have it available.
You can stream it, rent it or buy it through Amazon Prime Video.
You can also stream it on Crave, as well as through the Starz add-ons on both Crave and Amazon Prime.
Furthermore, several services have it available for digital rent, including Apple TV and Cineplex Store.
If you want a physical copy, there are plenty of DVDs of 'Jaws' circulating — just check your local thrift store and you may just find one.
A special documentary film about the making of 'Jaws' will also be released this summer.
The doc, titled 'Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story,' features Spielberg's exclusive story on the making of the film.
The film also features commentary from many other Hollywood big names who were clearly inspired by the film, including Emily Blunt, Jordan Peele, Guillermo del Toro, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron, George Lucas and many others.
The film will air on
National Geographic
on Sunday, July 13 and Monday, July 14. Check with your station for local time.
It will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu, starting July 10.
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Move over Helen of Troy. Fifty years ago, Jeffrey Kramer became the face that launched a trio of shark hunters on that famously not-big-enough boat, the Orca. Released on June 20, 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws holds bragging rights as Hollywood's first contemporary summer blockbuster, generating massive box-office returns and waves of movie-based merchandise. And Kramer can boast to being the first actor in the four film Jaws-verse to react to the gruesome remains of a shark attack victim. 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Consider this your essential summer beach reading. Talk about your temperamental movie stars. Due respect to the trio of Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss, but Jaws' main attraction was a mechanical shark named Bruce — and he famously didn't like performing on command. Bruce's various breakdowns and no-shows have long since become the stuff of Hollywood legend, and Kramer can attest to their veracity. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection "The first time I ever saw the shark, it was supposed to surface, but instead it just sank," he remembers. "Sometimes they'd be rolling three cameras, and there wouldn't be a foot of film that they could use." The upshot of Bruce's unreliability is that Kramer ended up with more screen time. "They needed to keep shooting something,' he laughs. 'So, my part blessedly got a little bigger." Meanwhile, watching Spielberg roll with the shark's various punches gave him an early crash course in set management — a lesson Kramer took with him later in life when he moved behind the camera as a producer on such shows as The Practice and Chicago Hope. "I always found him to be a kind, decent and talented man," Kramer says of the two-time Oscar winner. "There was so much on his shoulders, but he knew what he wanted, and he let you get there — but also helped you along the way." As an example of how Spielberg would allow the actors find their own way through a scene, Kramer points to a moment early on in Jaws where Brody and Hendricks are busying themselves as a battalion of fisherman descend on Amity in the hopes of being shark slayers. While Hendricks stands on the dock observing the action, Brody is inside a shack speaking hurriedly into the phone. As he hangs up, he throws a handful of debris at the window to catch his deputy's attention and motions for him to come inside. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection Kramer says that bit of business was improvised by Schieder on the day of filming. "It was a better entry into the scene than just having me walk through the door," he explains. "It also adds to the characters a little bit. Hendricks is such a happy guy, and he loves the island, so he's a little suspicious of all the outsiders showing up." Some of those outsiders do eventually catch a shark — though it's not the one that's responsible for all the mayhem. A tiger shark is hoisted on the dock as Amity's tourist-minded mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), prematurely declares the crisis over. Kramer says that the body of a real tiger shark was used for that scene, flown in directly from Florida, due to the absence of that particular species from Massachusetts waters. "They flew it up in a box filled with ice and every night after shooting they'd put it back in the box," he says now. "After three days, it smelled so bad! But we still had to smile and pretend that it didn't." Speaking of funky smells, Kramer recalls a particularly fragrant night out with Hamilton during the production of Jaws 2. As with the first film, the sequel wound up being a much longer shoot than anticipated… like nine months longer. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection Fortunately, Kramer and Hamilton had become fast friends during their first extended go-around on the Vineyard and knew how to put all that extra time on the island to good use — namely, lots of late nights at local watering holes. After one of those last-call lost evenings, the duo made their way back to their hotel when Hamilton decided to stop and pet a stray cat that had crossed their path. There was just one problem — that nighttime critter wasn't a cat. "It was a skunk!" Kramer exclaims, cringing at the sense memory. "Murray got full-on skunked! When we got to the hotel, he refused to go to his room and ended up sleeping on the couch in the lobby. By the next morning, that place was almost uninhabitable." Despite the olfactory offense, Kramer has nothing but fond memories of Hamilton, who passed away in 1986. "We shared a dressing room, and Murray used to keep a bottle of gin in my boot,' he says wistfully. 'Those movies took so long to shoot that you tended to make lifelong friends." You're not crazy: Deputy Hendricks really does go by Leonard or "Lenny" in the first Jaws. But in a key scene in Jaws 2, Brody calls him Jeff — a Scheider flub that ended up in the finished film. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection It's not unlike the infamous moment in Star Wars: A New Hope when a post-trench run Luke Skywalker triumphantly climbs out of his X-Wing and bellows, "Carrie!" — as in Carrie Fisher — instead of "Leia." (For the record, Mark Hamill has strenuously declared himself innoncent in the name-blame game.) "Roy called me Jeff in the scene and how it ended up staying in there, I'll never know," Kramer sighs. "It's such an oversight; I never imagined that they'd leave it in." The blatant flub might be indictive of Scheider's general disinterest in being part of Jaws 2. Kramer says that the actor was contractually obligated to headline the sequel, for which neither Spielberg nor Dreyfuss returned. Scheider fulfilled his contract, but his mind was clearly on other things — like soaking in the beach rays. "Roy got so tan in the movie, he had to be color-corrected in the final mix," Kramer says, chuckling. "He loved the sun — he sat out there all the time with a reflector and a G-string." (Scheider died in 2008 at age 75.) For a hot minute, it looked like Scheider was going to lose a deputy going into Jaws 2 as well. Kramer recalls that he turned down the movie after original director, John D. Hancock, created a partner for Hendricks who got all of the best lines. "But then Hancock got fired, and they brought in Jeannot Szwarc," Kramer explains. "Jeannot said, 'What happened to the deputy who was in the first movie? I liked him.' They brought me back and I was so grateful." During the course of Jaws 2, Hendricks becomes Amity's police chief after Brody is stripped of that title courtesy of his shark obsession. And even though the ex-chief ultimately saves the island again, Kramer believes that Brody let his deputy keep the badge. "I think Brody said, 'Get me off of this island!'" laughs Kramer. "'If I'm going to live here, I'm just going to go to the beach — I don't want to deal with sharks anymore.'" Universal Pictures/Everett Collection It's worth noting that 1987's Jaws: The Revenge revealed that Brody died of a heart attack in between movies. Kramer says he wasn't asked back for that notoriously awful fourth and final installment and wouldn't have wanted to return anyway. "Even I knew when to stop," he jokes. But that doesn't mean he's stopped thinking about his alter ego. Kramer says that he believes Hendricks remains a devoted Amity islander to this day, starting a family and maybe even taking his own adult kid on as the department's newest deputy. (In 2018, Hendricks starred in his own independent comic book that took the character in a more fantastical direction.) Not for nothing, but a Chief Hendricks cameo would be ideal fodder for an all-new Jaws sequel or reboot, although Kramer doesn't expect either to happen anytime soon. "Jaws will never get remade," he vows. "Nowadays they just want these kinds of movies to be bigger and it takes you out of any essence of reality." "Steven captured the fear of the primordial and the depths of the unknown, and inspired a generation of filmmakers," Kramer continues. "As time goes by, you appreciate Jaws more and more." 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